


On a Dark Night

by kyrilu



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Biting, Dreams, Ghosts, M/M, Marking, Power Play, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-23 11:28:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrilu/pseuds/kyrilu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bond comes back from a mission and finds his flat <i>cold.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	On a Dark Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Feralious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feralious/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy, feralious! I had fun writing this.
> 
> My thanks to death-is-not/cognomen for modding this fest, and all my love for my various email/PM/askbox/etc. fandom friends who have been amazing and supportive. (Especially you, Em. ♥)
> 
> This fic belatedly incorporates the Porn Battle XIV prompts _ghost_ , _loss_ , and _reunion_.

El aire del almena,

cuando yo sus cabellos esparcía,

con su mano serena

en mi cuello hería,

y todos mis sentidos suspendía.

- _En una noche oscura_ , San Juan de la Cruz.

 

Bond comes back from a mission and finds his flat _cold._ It hasn’t been lived in for about two months; he had been caught overseas from country to country as an undercover operative, and his old place is now rather rank and drafty.

He pulls his coat tightly over his rumpled suit, shivers a bit, feeling the draft emanating in the kitchen as he rummages for scotch. To his annoyance, there is none -- he must have finished the last bottle before he left on his mission, and never went out to get more.

With a muttered curse, he shuffles back into the living room, settling into the sofa, thinking that this goddamned night would be a thousand times better with alcohol in his stomach.

 _It’s probably going to snow later_ , Bond thinks. _Going to be a bitch of a storm._

He rubs at his forehead tiredly, and debates kipping out to buy scotch anyway, even though the snow’s likely to catch him by then, and that’d be too much fucking trouble. Bond shoves his hands into his coat pockets to keep the heat there, but then he pulls them out, laughs, when he finds a tube of lipstick in his palm.

There was a woman in Puerto Rico; _Sofia_ was the name she’d given him. She was working with a rather dangerous organisation and had a good sniper’s eye, and she liked to fuck Bond roughly against the hotel bed, kissing him with a red-slashed mouth. She must have slipped the lipstick into his pocket when she playfully snogged him farewell; her idea of a joke, perhaps.

He rolls the lipstick tube between his fingertips. It glints in the dim light, and Bond thinks that this is an amusing souvenir of his last mission, although it’s not as if he can frame it or anything. He lets out a breath, staring at his eyes reflected on the lipstick tube’s surface.

He rubs his forehead again. His flat is utterly desolate, and unpleasant, and _cold._ It’s strange being in London again, his internal clock teetering between timezones, and he wonders what he’s going to do to occupy his time. MI6’s granted him something of a break at the moment.

Bond thinks, _Pubs, maybe. A girl every night. A spot of gambling. I don’t have to worry about a mission, at least._ But the thought of those things make him feel so terribly aged -- like the pursuits of a young man, a wild man, and. Well. No.

He knows what he will do. He’ll gulp down bottles of pills, wander about his flat, huddle under the old duvet his mother had sewn. Then his next mission will come around, and he’ll find himself home once again--

He wants a fucking glass of scotch.

Bond shakes his head at himself, then, at the self-pity that he’s indulging in, and he turns on the telly as a distraction, the weather report flickering on screen. He pays attention long enough to find out that he was right about the upcoming snow storm, but his mind is restless, drifting off and away. His eyes are growing half-heavy, but his body is telling him it’s morning elsewhere, that he should be _awake, dammit._ Bond rubs his forehead for the third time, sinking deeper into the sofa.

Then he starts hearing voices. Or to be more precise, one voice. Raoul Silva’s voice. A whisper of Bond’s name, which solidifies into an actual person, a body beside him on the sofa.

“No one told me I was going mad,” Bond says with a bark of laughter. “You. Jesus Christ.”

“Resurrection,” the ghost or hallucination or a fragment of a dream says with a fragmented smile. “What do you think, James?”

Bond slides a finger across the shoulder of a faded white suit, and it feels real under his touch. Warm, even. Silva watches Bond with an amused expression, his eyes watchful and alert, and Bond gazes back, his own fingers cold, chilled.

“Remarkable,” Bond says dryly. “Go back to your grave, Mr. Silva. They’ll be missing you.”

“Who?” Silva says. “M?” He tips his head back, and Bond catches the curve of his almost obscure smile. “Miss Lynd?”

“What are you trying to say?” Impassively.

“This is interesting,” Silva murmurs, his head still arched backward, his voice distant. “If this is a dream, what do you think it is about? About me regaling you tales of hellfire and betrayal and misplaced loyalty? About me acting as your Ghost of Past, Present, Yet to Come?”

“It’s hardly Christmas,” Bond says. “I doubt that you can do much to induce me into the true Christmas spirit.”

“I’m sure you understand gifts,” Silva says.

Bond feels the brush of Silva’s leg against his. He steels himself to it, and remembers the pull of rope at his arms, at the slide of hands across his thighs. _Some things don’t change_ , he thinks.

Silva says again, “This is _interesting._ Perhaps I am here to haunt your dreams, yes? Dog your footsteps. Commit little pranks. Although this place is quite a ruin already.” He continues on, and positions his body so that he’s closer, his eyes visible and dark.

“Maybe,” Silva says, “it’s _this_ kind or dream.”

Then Silva is shifting, his teeth on Bond’s throat, and Bond lets out a low rumble, turning his body so that they’re in place the right way, so that their skin chafes against each other: heat, warmth, flashes of something shadowed and strange.

Silva’s mouth makes a fine line of red on his neck, bites that don’t quite cut skin, but sting on the surface. Bond’s fingers curl over Silva’s shoulders, steadying him as he continues to play with Bond’s collarbone, and he breathes, “What do you want?”

“What do you think?” Silva says. “What do you expect? Finer, neater things like absolution, salvation, or reconciliation, hmm? I almost forgot we’re both Catholic here, Mr. Bond.”

“Not any more,” Bond says, his eyes half-closed. “So you’re here to fuck me. I’m flattered, Mr. Silva.”

“If I’m real,” Silva reminds him, and his tongue now dips at the corners of Bond’s mouth. “I appreciate the ambiguity of this situation. Or your subconscious does. It’s quite a puzzle. Either way, it feels good anyway, James -- relax.”

“Silva,” Bond says, and he doesn’t know if it’s a warning, to back away, or an encouragement to continue.

“Call me Raoul, please, James.”

“Tiago,” he says, and Silva’s tongue halts its path to Bond’s teeth, and he feels a hiss against his face. He smiles, slowly. “You mentioned her earlier, don’t you remember? I think I’m perfectly in my rights to hark back to your good old days. Mystery solved: Ghost of not-Christmas past.”

And Bond shakes with suppressed laughter, and if it’s slightly uncontrolled, manic, Silva doesn’t seem to notice. Silva only bares a sharp grin like a Cheshire cat, and their bodies are farther away now.

 _If Silva had a gun_ , Bond thinks, _he would shoot me, right now._ And not to his heart or his brains, but some place where he would bleed out. Where it would hurt. He can understand Silva to this extent, and so he reciprocates Silva’s grin, muted on the edges, but clear in its taunting message.

Go ahead. Try me.

Silva says, “You think so highly of yourself, Mr. Bond. But you’re desperate. Always so desperate.” As he speaks, he holds a hand out to Bond, palms out, the fingertips a hair’s breadth away from Bond’s chin. “How do you go on like this, Mr. Bond? Living by moments of adrenalin and insanity and tragedy and fucking. And then you’re here. Alone. Cold--”

Bond lowers his mouth to the pads of Silva’s fingers, and he bites the skin, saying, “ _Shut up._ ”

Silva makes a soft murmur as Bond sinks his teeth in. His point is proven. There are droplets are blood on Bond’s tongue, and like the old cliche, copper-tasting, metal-tasting.

But realising himself, Bond snaps, “Ghost of the Present, Raoul?”

“Not cold anymore?” Silva says back.

“I’m not alone,” Bond says, “since you’re here. Adrenalin and insanity and fucking.”

“Tragedy,” Silva completes. He holds out his hand for the second time.

Bond bites again, and maybe he pretends that he’s causing Silva pain, that the blood on his mouth means something. Silva lets out a semblance of a growl -- they’re nearer to each other, like before; Bond can feel the tension coursing through the air.

Their bodies close together, fast and hard and static. Crazed, like this is a decision made in the last second, but this was already a choice made _before_ , an inevitability, once Bond had felt the roll of hands on his thighs, returned the suggestive smile, quipped back.

Silva’s control over himself is impressive, but Bond smirks when the syllables he says are half-formed Spanish: desperation. Again he wonders what this would mean -- as a dream, as a reality. And he’s perhaps desperate himself, hands passing over skin, mouth passing over mouth, and it’s the game of it that matters.

\--and they fuck, and Bond waits for the rise of his climax, and it washes over him, sweat dampening his forehead, the heat wrapping around them both.

Silva had marked Bond with that stray tube of lipstick, stark red on his skin. _RS_ on the back of his hands. Bond’s mouth twists at the sight of it, and he smears the stuff on his coat.

But he’s tired. He somehow falls asleep, naked, under a single blanket, and so fucking cold, but he barely feels it. As his eyes close, he doesn’t sense Silva at his side any longer.

He still doesn’t know: real, unreal, or something in between.

 

~

 

This one, he knows, is a dream.

Silva, his hair dark, smiles at Bond in the cold. Snow is starting to whirl down from the sky, and they’re standing outside the MI6 building together, their bodies at an easy proximity. M is barely visible from a high-up window, snow-white hair and a dark dress suit.

Silva -- no, Tiago -- holds an arm out to wave to her like a cheerful child while Bond scowls and tells him, “Please stop embarrassing yourself, Rodriguez.”

“Oh, don’t be like that, James,” Tiago says. “I just wanted to bid Mummy farewell.”

Bond is about to speak when Tiago says suddenly, turning, “Miss Lynd’s coming.”

A woman emerges from a nearby door. She wears an olive-coloured coat over a well-fitting suit, and her stride across the pavement is certain and unhesitant. Her hair is down her shoulders in long waves, a hat covering her head.

“Coming along again?” Bond asks, and there are snippets of memories in his head -- of time spent in Caribbean islands on the beach, watching her sit in the sun. _The light brings out her freckles_ , he remembers thinking. He had been sitting at the beach bar beside Tiago, throwing back fruity, frivolous drinks, and that was barely a mission, mostly a vacation.

Vesper shakes her head. “I’m not needed. Don’t have too much fun without me.” She has a minute smile on her face. “I’ll have the money wired over once you get there.”

“Thank you, my dear,” Tiago says. “I’ll be sure to manage our expenses wisely.”

“No wine,” Bond says.

“No cocktails,” Tiago says.

“Did you honestly name a drink after me, James?” Vesper says.

“I thought it went well together,” Bond says. “Tiago spends too much money on his tech, actually. He’s not satisfied with what Q makes. Damned stubborn.”

“We fund Q branch already,” Vesper says with a frown. “Tiago bloody Rodriguez. Are you squandering--”

“He’s young,” Tiago interrupts, making a dismissive gesture. “I’m sure he’ll improve, with time, but at this point, I’m supplying our weapons and whatnot. I assure you, I’m not _squandering_ anything. Merely upgrading some things, hmm?”

“Stubborn,” Bond repeats.

Vesper lets out a breathless laugh. “You’re staying at motels now, aren’t you? That’s why James is pissed. No money for posh hotels.”

Bond quirks an eyebrow in reply. Well. Yes. Maybe. And he’s not _pissed_ , more like exasperated, and has resorted to withholding sex, on occasion. He says, “He’s got me down to four-star hotels, Vesper. We’re not going any lower than that.”

“Ah, we’ll see,” Tiago says, winking. “We can do down further. But I think we should be leaving now, my dear. Don’t tell M about my expenses, yes?”

“I won’t,” Vesper says. “But she’ll find out, you know.”

“Well, not yet,” Tiago says decisively.

Bond rolls his eyes in Tiago’s direction. “Let’s go, Rodriguez. Goodbye, Vesper. We’ll be staying in touch via comm.”

“Goodbye, James,” Vesper says. Her eyes are a bright green in the evening darkness, and she returns to the MI6, shuffling gracefully through the frost.

Tiago says, “See you, darling!” but the door is shut already.

“I’m driving,” Bond says, but Tiago is far ahead of him on his way to the car, a laughably determined expression on his face. “--I’m driving,” he says again.

“Too late, James,” Tiago says in a pleased rumble.  Which leaves Bond to scowl and climb into the passenger seat, his eyes passing over the steering wheel longingly.

Bond half-heartedly cuffs the back of Tiago’s head with the palm of his hand, but the motion turns into something softer, and he’s brushing snow from Tiago’s hair.


End file.
